“The true con artist doesn’t force us to do anything; he makes us complicit in our own undoing. He doesn’t steal. We give. He doesn’t have to threaten us. We supply the story ourselves. We believe because we want to, not because anyone made us. And so we offer up whatever they want—money, reputation, trust, fame, legitimacy, support—and we don’t realize what is happening until it is too late.” – Maria Konnikova, The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It…Every Time #SiliconValley #BigTech

In case you needed another reason to not trust Telegram… https://geeknews.chat/@theregister/112082937657990816

I am now finally the owner of a Henry. This makes me far giddier than owning a vacuum cleaner should. PS. While in the store, had a little kid come up to the line of Henries (and one Hetty) on display, address each of them in turn, give them hugs, and tell them he loved them. What really guts me is knowing just how wonderful we could make this damn world if most of us weren’t in the employ of a relative handful of fucking psychopaths… #design

Your daily reminder that an immigrant shouldn’t have to carry out heroic acts to justify their existence or to be deserving of the same rights, privileges, and dignity that you enjoy as someone who just happened to be born where you live.

Your daily reminder that condemning genocide does not make you a ‘terror supporter.’” (And yes, fuck Hamas. They’re barbarians. The very low bar for any state that purports to be a democracy is to be better than barbarians.)

Israeli official slams Greta Thunberg after she backs Palestinians in Gaza – POLITICO

#israel #hamas #gaza #terrorism #apartheid #genocide

It’s not democracy if your only choice is Muahahaha, Fuck Your Feelings Evil or Awfully Sorry, Pardon Me Evil.

Your choice: a handful of psychopath billionaires or the survival of the species. Capitalists: Hmm, now this is a difficult one… I feel like saying we keep the billionaires? 🤔

War is Peace Freedom is Slavery Privacy Sandbox

Ars Technica

Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome

Chrome now directly tracks users, generates a "topic" list it shares with advertisers.

#google #chrome #adtech #surveillanceCapitalism #PeopleFarming #surveillance #capitalism #privacy #web #BigTech #SiliconValley

Glad to hear Apple has killed its plans to implement privacy-destroying on-device scan and snitch into its devices (although it will make autocrats like Erdoğan unhappy to hear it because they likely had plans for it).

WIRED

Apple’s Decision to Kill Its CSAM Photo-Scanning Tool Sparks Fresh Controversy

Child safety group Heat Initiative plans to launch a campaign pressing Apple on child sexual abuse material scanning and user reporting. The compan...

Here’s what I wrote about it at the time:

Aral Balkan

Apple is trying to redefine what it means to violate your privacy. We must not let it.

Violation of privacy by proxy is still violation of privacy.

Remember that end-to-end encryption is moot if the ends are already compromised. #apple #privacy #security #encryption #e2ee #humanRights

So who wants to help the @npub1kzk9...k9tq folks implement code search?

Codeberg.org

Code Search: Looking for maintainers

An existing issue (#379) tracks the feature to enable code search on Codeberg. To move this forward, I'd appreciate to create a team of people ava...

#git #codeberg #search #scm #versionControl #foss #openSource #dev

What am I doing? Why, voting to help decide @npub1kzk9...k9tq policy as a member. (Wait a minute, you can’t do that on GitHub? How odd… sounds a bit autocratic to me…) ;) Seriously, though, check out

Codeberg.org

Codeberg.org

Codeberg is a non-profit community-led organization that aims to help free and open source projects prosper by giving them a safe and friendly home.

– they’re doing everything right. There are alternatives and if we want them to survive, we must support them. #codeberg #git #scm #github #tech #dev #versionControl

It would appear that “former Tory MP Antoinette Sandbach has threatened the University of Cambridge with legal action after a historian named her as a descendant of merchants who enslaved his ancestors.”

the Guardian

Ex-Tory MP threatens to sue Cambridge University over slavery research

Student says he has been pressured to remove a reference to Antoinette Sandbach, a descendant of a slave merchant

Oh, my… It would be a damn shame if more people knew of this so please do not boost this post. #AntoinetteSandbach #SamuelSandbach #Sandbach #british #slavery #britain #slaveOwners #tories #tory #conservatives #uk #cambridge #colonialists #colonialism

Ran into this basic JavaScript scope gotcha today. Just goes to show, you could be programming in a language for years and still get tripped up by some of the simplest issues.

Cookie monster!

#JavaScript #scope #web #dev

Oh ffs, why do I even look into these things? I think I’m being harsh and then it’s always worse than I thought: FairPhone has taken venture capital. https://www.fairphone.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Crowd-Notification.pdf They’ve been invested in by, among others, Invest-NL (currently three exits, all IPOs¹) and Quadia (also three exits, all acquisitions²). I would just like it if for once – fucking once – it wasn’t just about making money. *sigh* ¹ https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/invest-nl/recent_investments ² https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/quadia/recent_investments #VentureCapital #VC #FairPhone

Be yourself… you’ll attract the kind of people who you actually want to be around.

“We see you’re using an ad-blocker.” I see you’re douchebags. #surveillanceCapitalism #adtech #web #tracking #douchebags

The latest VC-funded startup: We might be a scorpion but we promise we won’t sting you. Look, we’ve even painted pink hearts on our stinger! Folks: Aww, hello cute new scorpion! I’ve been stung by every other scorpion that said the same thing but I think the smartest I can do right now is to pet you and hope this time will be different.

The only thing worse than capitalism is capitalists.

Everyday there are at least a half a dozen posts that I want to boost but won’t because the images on them don’t have descriptions (“alt-text”) so they exclude people who use screen readers to experience the fediverse. If I have time, I’ll write/extract the text from an image and reply to the thread. But most times, I just have to favourite and move on. So come on folks, make it easier for me to boost your stuff and do the right thing by enabling everyone to experience your images and videos.

“How ChatGPT might be able to help the world’s poorest and the organisations that work with them” – United Nations University

inkl

How ChatGPT might be able to help the world's poorest and the organisations that work with them

ChatGPT has been touted as a tool that is going to revolutionise the workplace and home. AI systems like it have the potential to enhance productiv...

I see the United Nations continues to be the favoured PR agency for Silicon Valley. #UN #UnitedNations #SiliconValley #BigTech #SurveillanceCapitalism #PR #neoliberalism #corporatocracy #AI #ChatGPT #academiaWashing